Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

Does anyone know how to create parralax maps? I'm dying to know. (those are the ones that make textures look 3d and stuff, right?)

I thought thats what normal mapping did... as well as making things shinty as well.

Edd

Parralax maps make stuff like brcks look like they stick out of the wall, and the texture sort of moves with the camera to give that 3d effect. Look at the prison in the Imperial City for example, the bricks there look like they're 3 dimensional objects sticking from the wall, but it's a flat surface.

Start by investigating Bethesda's parallax maps. There's several in Data\textures\dungeons\chargen\ for instance idwalldirty01.dds. You'll notice that they look like fuzzy black-and-white pictures. White portions (255) are raised, black portions (0) lowered and gray (128) is presumable the midline with no altitude changes.

When I make parallax maps I paint over a copy of the original picture with grayscale fields, then blur it and stick it in the color map's alpha channel. You should see the changes take effect in Nifskope, assuming the nif is set up to use parallax maps. I.e. the Apply_mode of the NiTexturingProperty is set to APPLY_HIGHLIGHT.

They're a part of the normal map, right? The texture with the _n suffix? I've had a look at a few textures with that effect, and the raised parts look dark blue and the low parts look black.

Also, I've experimented with what makes textures shiny. It invilves alpha transparency in the normal map, right? I don't know how to make the object truly shiny though. I've tried that technique on the glass cups I made you, but they didn't end up shiny enough. So I tried changing the texture on a window that's already shiny. So I did the alpha stuff, and it turned out perfectly shiny ingame.

Parallaxmaps are in the alfa for the colormap.

making the alpha on the normal map entierly white should make them realy shiny. it also depends on the dds compresion you use (though i havent entierly figured that out). ive never tried to make things shiny, cause they always end up too reflective in my case (stone walls behaving like a mirror in the hammerfell sun? nope, not the desiered effect)

I don't know what people are talking about when they say white and black alpha though. When I open up the Alpha selection in Photoshop, it comes up as either red, which are transparent areas, and well, not red, which are the normal areas. I don't know how this makes the normal maps shiny. All it's done for me is just make things see through or not when I add an NiAlphaProperty in NIFScope to the part of the mesh I apply the texture to.

Not related to parralax maps though, but how do people make objects that are only semi transparent, like ice or glass? I've tried several methods, but whenever I edit an object's alpha, it always comes out as completely invisible, or not invisible at all.

This is all trying to figure out a way to improve those glass cups I made for ST too I still think they look bad, no matter how much I improve them. They're just not shiny, and they should be see-through. Yep, still those cups, after months and months. It's not just for ST, but I learn a lot about texturing from working on those. I just can't figure out the rest though.

red? wtf?

its supose to be black and white. black is the least reflective, white the most. this is all on the normal map, so it shouldnt make anything transparent (property or not)

I think normal maps make the object look 3D by making the lighting react in a specific way, while parralax maps make the object look 3D by displaying the textures based on the player's location and angle to whatever surface. Bethesda used combinations of both on many architecture meshes.

Normal maps are the _n textures.

Parralax maps are the alpha on the color map, I'm pretty sure, as VABG and Razorwing have pointed out (either in examples or straight messages).

Quote:Originally posted by IAMTHEEMPEROR
This is all trying to figure out a way to improve those glass cups I made for ST too I still think they look bad, no matter how much I improve them. They're just not shiny, and they should be see-through. Yep, still those cups, after months and months. It's not just for ST, but I learn a lot about texturing from working on those. I just can't figure out the rest though.

It seems like you already know this, but to make them see-through you'll want to attach an NiAlphaProperty to the NiTriStrips mesh. Try making a semi-transparent color map and setting the alpha flags to Src Alpha and Invert Src Alpha.

If that's the only thing that works, you might have to settle for either parralax or transparency. hrug: I don't know of any ways of having both.

EDIT: At least, I'm pretty sure you can't have both like that. Transparency is transparency as far as the program I use is concerned.